The Terrible

by Yrsa Daley-Ward

  It’s such a lonely thing.

  The terrible needs to eat and it eats whole lives up in one sitting.

  The terrible claps its terrible hands and everything falls right through them. The terrible is here one month and gone for a while until the middle of the next, allowing you to catch your breath—and just when you almost think everything is okay and when you are not over- or under-breathing, it surprises you in the middle of the night again. You find another kind doctor, with long hair. According to him, the terrible needs to drink more water, to take more walks—the terrible needs vitamin D and does not need anti-anxiety medicine; perhaps a dose of CBT on account of the OCD. On account of the mild germ phobia.

  The terrible breathes a sigh of relief. It will not take pills because it doesn’t believe in them but it does believe in spirulina, becomes vegan, becomes gluten free, takes some long walks in the sun,

  detoxes, removes the heavy metal from its terrible system. It wants to stop drinking but can’t, wants to call Roo but never, ever does. The terrible screams at your mother in amber nightmares and cannot understand for the life of it why you don’t want to take it to bed with you. It climbs in with you anyway; and it’s just as you thought. The terrible wakes up shuddering and BELLOWS

  and you try to lock it out of your room but it seeps under the gap between the door and the floor.

  The terrible meets a strange man in a bar who tells you that black people in his country are lazy and the terrible jumped right out and almost stabbed him;

  the terrible shocks you in ways that you could never imagine,

  tripping you up, doing things you shouldn’t do and things that you wouldn’t do,

  making a fool of you. It is shifty, and sometimes invisible, or on holiday. A good decision here, some abstinence there, some moderation there and you’ll think it’s left you alone but then you’re walking and the terrible is a hole waiting to catch you. A fucking hole in the ground. The terrible is why you cannot call your grandparents and the terrible is why no one can hear from Roo and the terrible is no Roo and distance from Samson and the reason why, when Grandma takes Marcia’s ashes away from the house, nobody complains. The terrible is a wall of smoke, always getting in the way, obscuring everything. William calls on your birthday, this year and the next and the next, and the terrible will not return his calls, making you wonder what kind of godless spirit destroys a perfectly beautiful thing. It trips you up to trip you up to trip you. It gathers around your neck like a charm, a teardrop of rust. It puts a hole in your throat and stuffs it up with

  yarn.

  The terrible sighs (again).

  The terrible gets warm inside when the man that is trouble buys you one last whiskey, the one to take you over the edge.

  The terrible cries and cannot believe it when you’re picked for the job over the other girls; its flips turn your belly upside down; the terrible takes you out for ice cream and no dinner when you sell Marcia’s house after Two and a Half DAMN YEARS and starves itself of alcohol. Perhaps it is your friend. Perhaps the terrible is your heart. Perhaps the terrible loves you, after all?

  Don’t you know I’ve been carrying you throughout all this?

  says the terrible.

  Don’t you know you’re one of the lucky one? shouts the terrible. Don’t you know I’ve got you, you ungrateful, ungrateful creature? You wretch! Don’t you know those dark times kept you stronger? (thus sayeth the terrible). Don’t you know without me you would be just another girl with an everyday life and an almost-house always under construction and a man you tolerate and don’t really love and a father you met but who stopped you from doing anything and seeing the world, don’t you know you’d be a boring woman with bills and a horrible job and wrinkles around her eyes and babies and babies and a mortgage and savings and boring sex or no sex and a lukewarm life, DON’T YOU KNOW I FUCKING KEPT YOU SAFE??? bellows the terrible, its yellow eyes gleaming. Don’t you know I gave you the best timelines, a glittering story, a punch line, a reason to live, don’t you know the drugs didn’t kill you—they could have or should have and never did, don’t you know your life has been one magic spell cast after the other, are you stupid, screams the terrible . . . well, are you? Don’t you know that without me you diediedie in the mundane? Have you learned nothing? Don’t you know you earned resilience? Don’t you know I KEPT YOU RICH!!! No . . . I didn’t think so, sniffed

  the terrible, shaking his.her.their head(s) violently in the wind,

  turning away from each other and the world,

  and why did you never love me?

  demands the terrible,

  her.his.their glittering yellow eyes wet with rage.

  The terrible has always been there for you. It’s true. At least since books and Mum and the worktop. It appears to you in many forms. In the night, you are arguing with Marcia, who becomes Linford. David is knocking at your door, grinning the grin of death. The light switches won’t work. There is a cat on the ceiling. Your grandparents wear glittery wings and fly into your room late at night. You answer a knock on the door and the cat walks in, seething, just like he owns the place. Just like that. There is a lion in your bed. There are scratches on the kitchen floor. Mum camps out in your dreams, your father appears, his back to you, and when he turns around he is Scott Bakula. You can’t sleep at night. What are the codes for the good and happy things?

  Did I drown?

  What are the coordinates to a place above sea level?

  No one can tread water forever. No one can swallow salt and brine and bile forever. And if we are to survive, what’s it for what is it all for and why why why all the pain why natural disaster why politics why war why danger every single day why the everlasting blanket of short breath and stress, anxiety and panic, why the frequency of fear are we coming of age till we die might we burn up in hellfire because we are wrong things always wrong things doing the wrong things why does the world hate black people is this a world is this the only world is it true, all of it, the Bible? Is there God is there a God and is God for us or against us? Did we displease the Holy Trinity might we die will we die will we live will any of us live and make it into the eternal life afterward is the earth ruined for good. Is it global warming why is the climate shifting. What turns a milk sky pink? Is it the sins of the world, bleeding up into the atmosphere reddening the clouds up above or is it love. Could it be love? Jesus Christ,

  can there be love?

  There will be more love,

  says the sky.

  There will be more love.

  (i)

  a girl walks into the bar and

  you are the girl. You and the terrible are drinking alone, sitting close to each other, holding hands, cozying up like old sweethearts. The barman says to you,

  “Why the long face?”

  When he asks you your name, you are not sure the words come out.

  (ii)

  a girl in a bar tosses her hair, drinks the second whiskey

  and feels better, teetering on the bar. The girl says, Waass-all-thisss then?

  The barman says,

  A night where people talk.

  They talk?

  They talk, he says. Mostly in poetry,

  he says.

  You like poetry? You remember poetry?

  There is something underneath your seams; you remember poetry. They say write your thoughts out. So you do, and you do and you do. They say write a poem about discord in the family,

  if you can. Next Monday, if you can.

  Come read it,

  if you can.

  You laugh. You say, Yeah. Yeah I think I could do that.

  The terrible writes poetry, impresses people

  The terrible writes poetry impresses people

  and the terrible writes poetry impresses people

  after all, it takes six moments to write a thing
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  1 you dream

  2 you wake up

  3 you sit down

  4 you settle on the chair/bed/floor

  5 you think what is happening? is this the day when nothing’ll come? is this the end of it?

  6 then you grip

  your heart, involuntarily

  and your soul comes up. Your soul comes up, I’m telling you.

  No such thing as a block, not really.

  Your soul arises and you let it; or you don’t.

  Epilogue

  The Time is now.

  Roo and I are parked up in the car. We were on the way to pick up the kids from their mother’s. He has three children now. I am back up North for the weekend to see our grandparents because Grandma is turning ninety.

  The sky has faded somewhat in the North of England. I’m sure there was more color back when we were kids, but that can’t be true. Unless the world is slowly paling.

  It is early morning time. We’re parked right opposite the house to see what we can see. We arrived with enough time to take a smart detour and stake out our old place. Clean, functional people live there now—you can tell by the paint job on the porch and the ordered lawn. There is a new high wooden gate out back, so we can’t quite see everything. There is one of those mobile homes parked outside, though, so I assume that the garden is kept well these days.

  “Looks like the best people got the job,” Roo says, wincing.

  They kept the rosebush, though, and the conservatory. The small potted plant in the front is a shapely fern now. The house still whispers Marcia’s. The cemetery is small and quiet, much more beautiful than I remember.

  The hallway light is on inside. I want to ring the doorbell. Ask if I can look around inside, but I daren’t. It could be too different in there;

  or worse, the same.

  The moon is in the morning sky, round and obstinate as it ever was. We giggle, because Roo has turned on the local radio and here comes the DJ talking in that broad Chorley accent.

  Bitty McLean’s version of “Dedicated to the One I Love” starts playing

  and this song always reminds me of Marcia Daley-Ward. God, could she dance.

  An old lady comes around the corner. Her hair and face are white and she has a neon-green walking stick. She catches my eye and stands still for a moment. Deliberately, she begins to cross into the space where we are parked. People are nosy round these parts. This was our neighborhood, though. We have as much right to be here as anyone else.

  She looks to be coming over to us.

  When at last she gets to the car I wind down my window,

  ready for whatever she has to say. She shifts on her walking stick and takes a breath before speaking, her eyes moving between Roo and I.

  “Hello, how are you?”

  “Um . . . good,” I say. “And you?”

  “You lived here once, didn’t you?”

  Surprised, I nod.

  “I remember you both,” she says. “Didn’t you live here with your mother?”

  This stops me for a moment. I clear my throat. I say,

  “We did, but it’s been a while. Both moved away now. I haven’t been back for seven, eight years.”

  “Ten,” says Roo. “Nearly ten.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes. I remember you both.”

  I don’t remember her at all. Roo is quite silent.

  “Round the back of you I lived,” she continues, as though reading our thoughts.

  “My husband died four years ago, of course, and your neighbors that were here, on this side, are gone too.

  Really special children you were. We always used to think that.”

  And then,

  “Will you be staying long? Won’t you come and visit?”

  No one says anything.

  “I reckon it’s going to rain,” she says.

  Roo nods and I look at the sky.

  “I have to get back to London,” I say. “But another time.”

  “Yeah,” says Roo. “Sometime soon.”

  “Well, good luck, you two, good luck,” she says. “I’m going to try and catch this bus now.”

  I say thank you, and smile and nod, and wind up the window. Roo falls silent again.

  Bitty McLean sings on

  “Each night before you go to bed, my baby

  Whisper a little prayer for me, my baby”

  and I lean my head back on the headrest, remembering my hands in Marcia’s. How she could move like no one else.

  There is a low rumble in the sky.

  All of a sudden, my brother’s eyes appear to dart beyond the passenger window. He moves suddenly

  and accidentally drops his cigarette out of the window.

  “What???” I say,

  “what’s up?”

  “Look at the rosebush,”

  says Roo.

  “Whaaat?

  What you talking about?”

  “I swear something just moved. Raa! That’s a mad ting.”

  “Get lost.”

  But Roo’s face hasn’t changed.

  It’s no joke, it seems. No joke at all.

  I look where he’s looking

  and I see the thing too.

  What luck. What terrific magic.

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